England invented the rail road concept. England was the biggest Industrial Revolution power on earth in the beginning and the trains ran on English coal. Now, that is all gone, completely and totally as of this month. England has been taken over by outsiders and owns none of its rail systems or the manufacturing of anything connected to trains. Labour calls for renationalisation after ‘staggering’ rail fare rises | Money | The Guardian has a letter from a reader that explains everything better than the article:

Grimble44 22h ago

Of course it’s not just the RUNNING of the trains which is a spectacularly wasteful fragmented shambles these days, it’s the procurement of the trains in the first place as well.

The Inter-City 125 still used on many lines after 40 years in service was designed, engineered and built by British Rail Engineering. All the intellectual property belonged to the UK taxpayer. And of course we also owned the finished trains.

But they’re about to be replaced by new trains designed, engineered, and all the high-value work carried out in Japan. The major components will then be shipped over in crates, and screwed together in a factory in County Durham owned by Hitachi. Hitachi own all the technology.

However it’s even worse than that, because these trains are supplied under a PFI agreement, where a consortium of Hitachi and money-men get a 25-year guaranteed contract to supply and maintain the trains. As with all PFI, this is incredibly poor value for the taxpayer compared with the simple alternative of just buying the trains….. but the advantage for the government is that it needs far less money upfront.

And of course all our other trains aren’t owned by the operators, or Network Rail, either. They’re owned by a totally unnecessary extra layer of profit-siphoning….. train leasing companies.

They were given BR’s entire stock of trains free, gratis and for nothing, so they could make their wodge maintaining and leasing them to the operating companies (who are paying for them with what is mostly our money). So the taxpayer is paying to lease trains built at the taxpayer’s expense.

And the icing on this cake of insanity is that the Tories sold British Rail Engineering to a Canadian company. So now all the profits on trains built in Derby go to Canada. And Britain is the only major country in the world which no longer has its own train-building company.

The People have a good idea of what is going on here. The same process is at work in the US.

Just a replication of what’s been done to Greece, Portugal, and yes, America. Not sure how long the hollowing out of former independent countries, but I expect America to circle the drain just like Great Britain. It’s only a matter of time.

My brother lives near Atlantic City and stated that as of January first of this year, a new requirement for food stamp recipients will be in place. Proof must be submitted that one has worked at least 20 hours each week, I’m assuming this includes volunteer work since the unemployment rate is much higher that what is reported. Governor Christie has redirected money from the public transit bus and train lines and dedicated it to the increasingly privatized toll roads.

Due to more and more casinos going up in nearby states, a vote is coming which, if allowed to go through, will eventually cede all revenue from the dwindling casinos from the public sector to private investors over a thirty year time period. The revenue would dwindle over that time, the amount going to the public diminishing each and every year until it reaches nothing. For a thirty year old, that means no tax base by the time they’re ready to retire. Nice, huh?

The vultures, the bloodsucking leeches in the Private Sector have always known that there are enormous sums of money to be made by latching on to the government in one form or another. Defense contractors know that if they build weapons systems that don’t work, they will simply lobby for more funding. And then more funding after that. This ‘privatizing’ the public sector really gained momentum when Reagan became President (and that would be Thatcher in The UK). One of the first things Reagan did was to break the Air Traffic Controllers Union (PATCO). Thatcher used the same approach in the UK. Remember that that sleazy fraudster Reagan’s favorite line? Reagan would say that the scariest words a person could hear were: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” I guess people are going to have to be thrown out into the streets before they figure out that they have been conned out of any future–other than homelessness and poverty. By then it will be too late. I just hope those non-wealthy, but still voting Republican types get a taste of what’s coming.